


Anbernen

by inkling



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkling/pseuds/inkling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nothing breaks the silence that follows the muffled boom."  Missing <strike>scene</strike> moment for "Sunday".  Major spoilers for that episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anbernen

betagratitudes:   [](http://iamrighthere.livejournal.com/profile)[**iamrighthere**](http://iamrighthere.livejournal.com/) and [](http://aslowhite.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://aslowhite.livejournal.com/)**aslowhite**, for cheerleading and for snipping, tucking, and trimming.

__  
**Anbernen**  


Nothing breaks the silence that follows the muffled boom.

Painted windows and abalone walls still even as they shiver.  Radek's hand shoots out to grasp the quivering laptop in front of him, and then there is nothing but the intensity of their listening, small bubbles of hope fighting for cohesion against amberlit silence.

Elbows braced against the burnished metal worktable, Ronon stills, too familiar with this sudden echoing absence to struggle.  Radek simply closes his eyes and lets his chin sink down to his chest, one hand still resting on the lid of his laptop as he surrenders to the thickening silence. 

 John hunches over the worktable, his eyes locked on the computer in front of him. Carson's defiance, once limned in red, is now a tiny, splattered, glowing thing on his screen.  John's lips and knuckles are white, his fist clenched and hovering in midair, caught and held by the dead air in his earpiece.  Small bubbles cluster along creaking fractures, as if to prevent the solidity of Atlantis from splintering away beneath their feet.

There is no air where Rodney stands.  He is frozen in amber, mouth open, eyes wild already with the curse of knowing, knowledge that will not allow him denial, will not forgive, not even if heathen lips spilled the numberless lies shaped as prayers he'd never confess.  Science is a god, his god--makes him god.  Science brings him answers, fixes, solutions to everything under and around and beneath and within the suns of two galaxies--and possibly two universes.  It is his job, and his calling to save the day, every day. 

In this day's silence, golden, refracted like sunlight stained through glass, his magic fingers twitch, once, twice--fail him when they conjure nothing from his science, no miracle to reverse the accumulating seconds and seconds and more seconds of dead air, a slow, golden crawl of the total lack of Carson's voice. 

Damn it, Carson knows the script; they all do, can play it on repeat.  He knew he was--knows he is--supposed to be shouting by now, shouts they can't breathe until they hear, so where is he?  Air is important; oxygen, nitrogen, brain cells.  Snap! Snap! Snap! 

But his magic fingers are sluggards, his calling and his godhood impotent against this relentless solidification of air into nothing nothing nothing...

With one will they seek to conjure voices--a voice--out of this ever thickening press of amber silence, to pull _Carson_ from this noiseless suffocation.  He would be--is, he is--yelling for assistance, for the teams he'd so recently locked out of the Operating Suite to get in there--now!-- and John's men--who'd surely run in to help when they'd heard the explosion--to either get out of his way or help--_step back now, let me in there and oh, there you are, good.  Here--take that, pick this up--gently, now, gently--All right, let's go!  Let's move!_

But nobody moves as the creeping flow slows, solidifies, traps them forever beneath its airless caul.  Frozen, they can run the script forever in their heads; flecks and ash and debris of Carson shouting, taking charge, stepping up, putting forth his hands to begin the mending and set in motion the healing and the making-right-of-everything. But no matter how they will the actual sound of their friend's voice to disintegrate this breathless, bone-crushing weight of amber silence, no matter how they seek to force the noiseless air to give it up, to give _him_ up--

Nothing breaks the silence that follows the muffled boom.

* * *

* * *

Anbernen: Amber.  From an Ancient Belgian term meaning "to burn."

Please to remember to feed the author?


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